Note on the Translators

Lily Chiu translated “Accident”, interviewed Ly Lan, and wrote the introduction, teaching guides and bibliography for the Ly Lan page.

She earned her doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan with a dissertation on postcolonial Vietnamese and Francophone Vietnamese literature by women writers, “Alter/Native: Imagining and Performing the Native Woman in Francophone and Vietnamese Literature.” Her most recent publication is “Camille’s Breasts: The Evolution of the Imaginary Native in Regis Wargnier’s Indochine”, in the collection Indochina and France: Cultural Representations, edited by Kathryn Robson and Jennifer Yee.

Chiu lived two years in Vietnam: the first teaching English at the University of Can Tho, and the second doing research under a Fulbright scholarship in Ho Chi Minh City. She has taught Vietnamese literature at the University of Michigan and Hampshire College. Lily currently lives in Belgium and teaches Vietnamese in Ghent as well as English at the Institut Libre Marie Haps, a translation college in Brussels.

Kevin Bowen , who translated “The Ghost” with Ly Lan for Manoa, has been instrumental in bringing Ly Lan and dozens of other Vietnamese writers to the United States through his work at the Willam Joiner Center at the University of Massachusetts, where he teaches.

Curbstone Press, publisher of three of Bowen’s own books of poems, including Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong and as well his book of translations from the Vietnamese with Nguyen Ba Chung, 6 Vietnamese Poets: Poems by Y Nhi, Nguyen Khoa Diem, Lam Thi My Da, Nguyen Duc Mau, Xuan Quynh, & Pham Tien Duat, maintains an author page on Bowen at http://www.curbstone.org/authdetail.cfm?AuthID=63